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Spatial and Sequential Organization of Gaze During Facial Expression Recognition Tasks.
Alessandro De Santis1, Giusi Antonia Toto1, Guendalina Peconio1
1Learning Science Institute (LSi), Department of Human Sciences, University of Foggia, 71121 Foggia, Italy.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|May 27, 2026
Summary
Facial expression recognition involves structured gaze patterns, primarily focusing on the central facial zone. This gaze organization remained consistent across different stimulus presentation orders.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Facial expression recognition relies on dynamic visual sampling of the face.
- Static area-of-interest (AOI) measures offer limited insight into gaze sequencing.
- Understanding gaze organization is crucial for explaining recognition processes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate gaze organization during facial expression recognition.
- To compare gaze patterns across conditions with varying temporal stimulus order.
- To determine if contextual and facial stimuli order affects gaze dynamics.
Main Methods:
- Eye-tracking data from 27 participants performing facial expression recognition.
- Gaze fixation mapping onto Upper (UFZ), Central (CFZ), and Lower Facial Zones (LFZ).
- Analysis using Markov models, entropy, spatial repositioning, and gaze stability index.
Main Results:
- Gaze transitions exhibited a non-random, CFZ-centered organization.
- CFZ was the most frequent fixation destination, showing lower transition uncertainty.
- Second-order models confirmed CFZ dominance, with minimal condition-specific gaze differences.
Conclusions:
- Facial expression recognition involves a consistent exploration pattern favoring the central facial region.
- Gaze organization is robust and shows limited sensitivity to stimulus temporal order.
- The central facial zone plays a pivotal role in processing facial expressions.
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